Citigroup has recently welcomed two new hires into their digital assets team — a latest sign that the Wall Street powerhouse is taking another step into the crypto world.
Not only that, they were none other than IBM veteran Ryan Ruggs and former LexTego CCO David Cunningham.
Citi has appointed Rugg as its global head of digital assets for treasury and trade solutions (TTS). “Ryan is well positioned to advance TTS to the next phase in our digital assets journey,” stated Citi.
According to the third-party representative, she had served as a partner and leader of the IBM Americas Blockchain team. She will be based in New York and reporting to Citi’s nationwide head of partnerships & innovation within the TTS unit, Carol Grunberg.
As for Cunningham, he will be taking up the role as TTS division’s director and strategic partner development for digital assets.
Cunningham most recently held the position of chairman of crypto exchange Coinmama, and chief commercial officer of LexTego, a regtech company. He will be based in Dublin, and be under the direction of global head of TTS strategic partnerships, Kunal Bist.
Despite the situation of the bear market, Wall Street’s digital asset base continues to expand. Smaller firms and bulge-bracket banks are in their efforts to expand their crypto offers for institutional clients.
BlockRock (BLK), the largest asset managers in the world, recently formed a partnership with Coinbase (COIN), the publicly traded crypto exchange, to offer crypto to institutional investors directly.
In order to provide full-service trade execution and custody solutions for institutional clients, investment bank Cowen (COWN) launches its digital-asset division.
